speaker
Operator

Greetings and welcome to the RPT Realty fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Vin Chow, Senior Vice President of Finance. Thank you. You may begin.

speaker
Vin Chow

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for RPT's fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, management would like me to inform you that certain statements made during this conference call, which are not historical, may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Additionally, statements made during the call are made as of the date of this call. Listeners to any replay should understand that the passage of time by itself will diminish the quality of the statements made. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, factors and risks could cause actual results to differ from expectations. Certain of these factors are described as risk factors in our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2019, and quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the third quarter of 2020, and in our earnings release for the fourth quarter of 2020. Certain of these statements made on today's call also involve non-GAAP financial measures. Listeners are directed to our third quarter and fourth quarter press releases and our fourth quarter supplement, which includes definitions of those non-GAAP measures and reconciliations to the nearest GAAP measures, and which are available on our website in the Investors section. I would now like to turn the call over to President and CEO Brian Harper and CFO Mike Fitzmaurice for their opening remarks, after which we will open the call for questions.

speaker
Brian Harper

Good morning, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter 2020 conference call. I hope you and your families are all well. 2020 will be a year not soon forgotten. The health and economic impacts from COVID-19 have been unprecedented. Add to this the social and political unrest our country has experienced, and 2020 will no doubt go down as one of the most historic and difficult years in our lifetime. While the issues facing an open-air shopping center REAP are small in comparison to 2020's broader challenges, I am proud of RPT's response and execution this past year. From our tenant assistance program and charitable donations, to our property level safety and curbside pickup initiatives, RPT demonstrated its commitment to our purpose of turning commercial ground into common ground. We also took swift and decisive actions to shore up our liquidity and preserve our access to capital with our first time investment grade credit rating from Fitch. In addition, I was very pleased with the team's tireless effort in pursuit of rent collections, which improved to 91% in the fourth quarter. Following the payoff of our remaining $100 million balance on a revolver, we have over $100 million of cash and a fully undrawn $350 million revolver, and are now positioned to take full advantage of our unique and valuable partnership with GIC. and opportunistically execute on our external growth plans. We continue to track a healthy pipeline of acquisitions and have started to see some improvement in activity in recent weeks. Let me just reemphasize that the underlying real estate is the primary driver of our acquisition strategy. What we then look for is growth. That could come in a variety of ways from under market rents and mismanaged assets to redevelopment opportunities. It could also come in a variety of different retail formats from grocery anchored, lifestyle centers, power centers, to community centers. As previously reported, we had five deals in our GIC venture either signed or in negotiations in February of 2020. Once the pandemic hit, we and our partners made the decision to get out of all of them. We are now fortunate to have the liquidity and the deep pipeline within our core markets and believe the widening value gap between property types, tenant categories, and markets is creating differentiated opportunities that we hope to take advantage of in 2021. One thing we pride ourselves on is skating to where the puck is going, not to where it's been. Last year, we entered the Austin market with our off-market acquisitions of Lake Hills Plaza. Since our acquisition, Tesla announced a new $1.1 billion assembly plant. Google, Oracle, and Digital Realty, to name a few, each announced relocation or expansion plans to Austin. And Barshop and Oles announced plans for a new $1 billion mixed-use development directly across the highway from our property. It's been a little over a year since our acquisition. We are more convinced than ever about this dynamic market that truly represents where the puck is going. From a leasing perspective, we continue to make good progress on our grocery negotiations. and are also in negotiations with tenant categories such as home improvement, wholesale club stores, off-price, QSR, and medical use tenants. This quarter, we signed a total of 120,000 square feet, up 10% year over year. Notable signings this quarter included two new deals with a modern tech-enabled healthcare provider. These deals exemplify our enhanced focus on health and wellness tenants. We also have good activity on the two Steinmark boxes that we took back in the quarter, where we have an opportunity to significantly improve the tenancies of both boxes. At under $1,150 of ABR per square foot, we also see a solid mark-to-market opportunity upon release of these spaces. One Steinmart box is already in lease, and the other has multiple LOIs that are being negotiated with very strong national brands. We ended the fourth quarter with a signed but not open backlog of 3.2 million, up from 3 million last quarter. We are currently tackling roughly 2 million of AVR that is currently in lease negotiation, up from about 1.5 million last quarter. giving us some visibility on offsets to potential future fallout. The leasing pipeline is robust, and we are encouraged by the impact it will have on our future cash flows. Additionally, we have a number of re-merchandising opportunities that we are pursuing that are listed in our supplement. These 11 projects consist of redemising, expanding, or combining spaces similar to the 18 targeted re-merchandising opportunities that we completed in 2019. As we did on those projects, we expect to earn attractive returns on our capital of high single to low double digits on this next set of deals. Despite the end of year increase in reported COVID cases, our suburban portfolio was less impacted by additional lockdown measures taken since the summer. 94% of our portfolio by ABR remains open, unchanged from last quarter, with 4% of our closures tied to our theaters. The reopening of our theaters remains fluid. Our exposure is almost entirely tied to Regal. whose parent company, Synerald, recently obtained additional financing they expect to provide liquidity through 2021 and beyond, which is a positive milestone for this tenant. Before I turn the call over to Mike, I want to end my remarks with some thoughts on our reinstated dividend. While we continue to place a high premium on our cheapest source of capital, retain cash flows, we understand how important the dividend is as a component of our total return to shareholders. With that in mind, we established a seven and a half cent per share common dividend for the first quarter 2021. The quarterly rate reflects a purposeful analysis of our expected taxable income and our liquidity needs. We believe the new rate is sustainable and can be grown in conjunction with earnings, while allowing us to preserve cash to support our growth opportunities, and providing sufficient cushion to weather periodic future downturns. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike.

speaker
Barshop

Thanks, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Today, I will discuss our fourth quarter results, our strong balance sheet and liquidity position, and end with commentary to help everyone understand our expectations on how our business will trend in 2021. Fourth quarter operating FFO per share of 18 cents was consistent last quarter, and again, largely driven by rent, not probable collection that I will refer to as bad debt throughout my prepared remarks for simplicity. For the fourth quarter, our bad debt and abatements were 4.4 million, about the same as the third quarter. We reserved about 89% of our uncollected fourth quarter recurring billings, leaving limited downsides from these categories relative to our fourth quarter run rates. As of year end, 18.1 million of our recurring billings for the period of April through December 2020 remain outstanding, of which 11.9 million have been reserved. We expect most of the unreserved amount of $6.2 million to be paid back over the course of 2021 and 2022. We continue to be quite pleased with the resiliency of our portfolio and our limited bankruptcy exposure as our lease rate of 92.8% held up well in the quarter, down just 50 basis points sequentially, primarily driven by the recapture of our two Steinmart leases that I noted last quarter. Blended rent spreads for the quarter remain positive at 3.4%, impacted by a few flat strategic renewals. Also, it's important to note that the releasing spread is just one factor in the organic growth profile. The other factor that we heavily weigh in lease negotiations are the annual contractual rent increases. The leases that we signed during the quarter, annual contractual rent increases were about 150 basis points, which is a key contributor to creating a long-term sustainable NOI growth profile. As we have noted consistently, we expect some volatility in our quarterly statistics given the size of our portfolio, but see a continued mark-to-market opportunity as we cycle legacy leases over the next few years. And as Brian noted in his remarks regarding dividend policy, we have placed a premium on free cash flow, allowing us to utilize our cheapest form of capital to take advantage of these opportunities as we restabilize our portfolio to pre-COVID lease rate levels of nearly 95%. We were very pleased with our first-ever investment-grade credit rating from Fitch, highlighting our balance sheet strength and flexibility. Couple this distinction with an increased confidence in our business and in our access to low-cost debt capital, we no longer felt the need to maintain an outsized cash balance and repaid the remaining revolver balance of $100 million last week. We will also continue to mine our portfolio for additional capital-raising opportunities to further bolster our liquidity position and fuel our external growth plans. We ended the fourth quarter with trailing 12-month net debt to perform adjusted EBITDA of 7.4 times, up slightly from 7.2 times last quarter as another COVID impacted quarter entered the calculation. We remain committed to bringing leverage into our long-term target range of 5.5 to 6.5 times and expect to see steady improvement in EBITDA as we return to more normalized reserve levels and as our signed leasing backlog begins to kick in over the course of 2021. We are establishing 2021 operating FFO per share guidance of 77 to 87 cents, which is an improvement EXPECTED IMPROVEMENT OVER THE ANNUALIZED 2020 FOURTH QUARTER OPERATING FFO PER SHARE OF 72 CENTS. KEY DRIVERS FROM THERE ARE FAVORABLE IMPACT OF THREE CENTS FROM INTEREST EXPENSE PRIMARILY DUE TO THE REPAVEMENT OF OUR REVOLVING LINE OF CREDIT AND TWO CENTS FROM OUR SIGN NOT OPEN BACKLOG THAT WE EXPECT THE VAST MAJORITY TO OPEN RATABLY IN 2021. Further upside is based on favorable bad debt reserves, which we expect to be heavily influenced by the reopening of our theaters, which is a function of the trajectory of the vaccine rollout and movie productions. While our assumption is that these circumstances will improve over the course of 2021, we felt establishing a wider range was appropriate given the potential varying outcomes for our theater exposure, which would represent about $0.10 per share of earnings. If our theaters remain closed and do not pay their contract for rent, our operating FFO could be at the low end of the range, and conversely, if they are open and paying, we should be near the high end, all else equal. It is important to note that our guidance does not include the net impact of changes to 2020 estimates for bad debt and straight-line rent reserves. Also, while acquisitions are not assumed in our guidance range, we intend to redeploy our $100 million of cash on the balance sheet into opportunistic acquisitions that meet our strict underwriting standards representing upside to our range. While the near-term COVID trajectory remains uncertain, we are cautiously optimistic that the worst is now behind us. As we move closer to a more normalized environment, and given the conflicting impacts of permanent move-outs on rent collection statistics, we hope to return our focus to more traditional measures of re-operating performance like occupancy, rent spreads, and same-property and OI growth. As part of our ongoing efforts to improve our disclosures, this quarter we added a net asset value page to our supplemental on page 14 to help facilitate your analysis of our real estate value. And with that, I will turn the call back to the operator to open the line for questions. Operator?

speaker
Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. The confirmation turn will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. Our first question is coming from the line of Derek Johnson with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Derek Johnson

Hi. Hi. Good morning, everybody. Can we get a deeper update on external growth? Specifically, what are you seeing in private market pricing, also strip investor appetite? And then secondly, we're in a new year here. What are you hoping to add property profile-wise or market-wise? And then, you know, what's the mix between unbalanced sheet versus additions to the GIC JV? And any reason you guys didn't give acquisition guidance since it's such a big part of the story?

speaker
Brian Harper

Yeah. Hi, Derek. Let me hit the first update. You know, what we're seeing from acquisitions, obviously a lot of deals did not trade in 2020. Certainly a lot of deals north of $50 million in the retail ecosystem didn't trade. We have seen a lot of loosening up from that perspective, and that's from private individuals, that's from larger private companies, and that's from institutions. I will say largely we're not much of a on-marketed deal buyer. We like the true-off market. We have been sourcing the deals for over this past year. And really, you know, as I said in my prepared remarks, had a huge pipeline pre-pandemic of $700 million with five deals under contract in February that we bowed out. I think the important thing that I want to put framework around is we're a bottom-up IRR company. And we're here to drive value and achieve the highest risk adjusted returns. I do want to emphasize, and this goes into our not providing guidance. We will continue to be disciplined and patient. There's obviously a lot of uncertainty and we are extremely disciplined on our underwriting and don't want to do this quarter to quarter guidance of acquisitions. as opposed to, you know, providing a full-year guidance. I think the mix of balance sheet versus GIC will be mixed. There's a lot of arbitrage to be had and a lot of property types that might be, you know, maybe too frothy and some might have opportunities to have that value-added risk-adjusted return. So we see that as a blend, a really good blend of both Balance Sheet and GIC. And I can't emphasize just the partnership with GIC. They've been nothing but terrific. We're talking all the time, and they're bringing us opportunities as obviously we're bringing them opportunities.

speaker
Derek Johnson

Okay. No, thank you, Brian. Very insightful. Can we talk a bit about tenant demand? Now, how do you feel about current leasing activity and where, you know, where is your pipeline now versus pre-COVID? I know you shared in the open remarks, you know, where it was versus last quarter, but how about versus pre-COVID? And then secondly, you know, how could you describe your portfolio-wide mark-to-market opportunity given, you know, the leasing demand you see today?

speaker
Brian Harper

Yeah, thanks. You know, statistically, I would say we're not quite back to 100% of the inquiries and tours that we were seeing pre-pandemic. Some companies, you know, are not flying yet. both from the retailers, but it's improved dramatically over the last two quarters. We feel qualitatively the activity we're seeing feels more transactional with more genuine interest and a higher conversion rate with the tenants we are in dialogue now with as opposed to even last quarter or the quarter before. I do think our suburban portfolio with grocers and high-volume, off-price tenants mixed with the good geography, demos, et cetera, is driving demand. And there's always going to be a flight to quality. And as you've heard from me even pre-COVID, there was a flight from malls. And, you know, that's something we continue to see a lot more of. And as we've been strict with not just filling up space, is curating to the right merchandising mix and really staying true to service and essential businesses. What that mall interest is, it's creating friction in the market. And that helps drive spreads. That helps drive competing tenants to, you know, to higher rents. So I've been very, very pleased with the results from leasing. I mean, it's a very healthy backlog of S&O of 3.2 million today with a million eight in lease negotiations with, you know, a lot behind that and call it LOIs or proposals or advanced negotiations. So, you know, I mean, from coming out of a pandemic and really looking at our 2019 levels of S&O, that led to a sector-leading 4.1% NOI growth, I'm feeling extremely pleased.

speaker
Barshop

And Derek, from a mark-to-market perspective on the rest of our portfolio, we've only about cycled through about 30% of the portfolio since we've been here. Since mid-2018, we still do see significant opportunity there. Over the last 12 months or so, our new releasing spreads have been about 20% on a blended basis. And we do see that number continuing over time as we continue to cycle through the remaining part of the portfolio. And just from a leasing volume perspective as well, to answer your question straight on. We do expect from a deal count perspective for new leases to be up about 50% relative to 19, or I'm sorry, relative to 20, which is on par with what we did in 2019.

speaker
Brian Harper

And Derek, one more thing just to bring into the weeds, which I like to do is just to give you some more context of some legacy leases. We have a huge, huge push on this grocer initiatives and and what we're now seeing too from home improvement and wholesale clubs really to bring that essential mix into the cash flows. We have two legacy leases that were expiring in two years. We were proactive with them. We are finalizing a lease that is out for signature today with a first-to-market major grocer. That grocer deal over the prior legacy leases was a 66% spread. Like that is the opportunity within this portfolio. And I could say that's a power center. So that's a huge value creation, not only from isolating the deal by itself, but the cap rate compression and the overall deal valuation. So we're seeing that across the board.

speaker
Derek Johnson

Thank you. Thank you, Brian and Mike.

speaker
Brian

Thanks. Thanks, Eric.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Todd Thomas with KeyBank Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Todd Thomas

Hi, good morning. I just wanted to circle back first to the acquisitions and I guess the GIC Venture specifically. Can you just remind us how investments were to be split between RPT and the venture, and have the parameters changed at all for the venture, the scope of what, you know, the joint venture is willing to buy relative to RPT?

speaker
Brian Harper

Yeah, I mean, I think first and foremost, it's a partnership, and we're talking more now than we ever have, and even prior to COVID, we were talking a lot, and again, it's It's an unbelievable partnership where I couldn't be happier. Really, the venture was set up to really focus on grocery centers. They have a ROFO for any grocery center over $25 million in the top 75 MSAs. With that said, would they look at other – uh, asset types within the retail world? Yes. Um, and, and, and I'm not saying that's something we wouldn't do, but, you know, something that we're being very mindful of is obviously the balance sheet, you know, growing that as well as, as, as our relationship with GIC.

speaker
Todd Thomas

Okay. And, um, going forward, well, do you, do you anticipate, um, Will the venture, you know, primarily be structured the same as it was when it was initially formed, you know, with your share being 51.5% or, you know, is that expected to potentially change for future investments here?

speaker
Brian Harper

We're looking at a lot of options. I mean, I think the thing that we love with them is there's just great flexibility. So it's – listen, obviously there's – You know, you look at it from a lens of single assets or a small portfolio to large portfolios, which would maybe be a less of an ownership interest. So there's just a love about them is their global reach, their strategic minds, but also their flexibility towards the partnership.

speaker
Todd Thomas

Okay. And Mike, I think you said the guidance does not include acquisitions, but there's an expectation that the $100 million of cash on the balance sheet will be deployed during the year. Is that right? And then are there any asset sales being contemplated? Are you looking to monetize any properties in 2021, potentially some parcels or individual assets?

speaker
Barshop

No, good question, Todd. No, there's no transactions embedded into our guidance range on the disposition front, nor the acquisition front. So if we were to go out, which is our intention, to redeploy the $100 million into acquisitions, that's going to be upside to our range of $77.87.

speaker
Todd Thomas

Okay. And you do expect to deploy, you know, $100 million during 2021?

speaker
Barshop

Yeah, I think at this point, timing is the biggest variant, right? So that's why we're a bit hesitant on putting it within the guidance range, just given the pandemic that we're still currently experiencing. But if I had to guess, I would say that the $100 million will be redeployed in the second half of this year.

speaker
Todd Thomas

Okay. And are there any assets that are being contemplated at all? No. Okay. All right. Thank you.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Craig Schmidt with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Craig Schmidt

Great. Thank you. Regarding the new grocers that you're looking at, are they looking at taking new space by converting parking lots, or are they replacing existing space?

speaker
Brian Harper

Hi, Craig. These would be all taking existing space. We don't have any grocers. doing ground up in the parking lot. So what I love about this is just huge value creation. And I would say the majority of these grocers would be taking, you know, space within power centers. They want simply, you know, the best in class grocers, which you can count on, you know, one hand, they want the best real estate. And they don't, you know, they don't mind if it's, you know, replacing a former grocer to a power center, to potentially a freestanding location.

speaker
Craig Schmidt

And are you able to raise rent in the examples you're working on?

speaker
Brian Harper

Yeah, so the example I gave you where we have a deal out for signature in one of our core markets, these were legacy leases of two tenants. We're combining those two spaces for this first-to-market major grocer. That spread, Craig, is 66%.

speaker
Craig Schmidt

And I guess you did two strategic deals in the fourth quarter, which kind of lowered the leasing spreads. Do you think at the end of the year you'll be closer to your high single-digit, low double-digit rate?

speaker
Brian Harper

Yeah, I would think that. I mean, I think this is always tough to track spreads quarter to quarter. We had obviously monster spreads last quarter, and these spreads were moderate and really were – dragged down just by a couple of strategic deals that we did on a portfolio with a tenant where we just thought it was best to renew short-term flat as to take the vacancy. So, yeah, that would be my guess right now of that, of high single-level digits.

speaker
Craig Schmidt

Thank you.

speaker
Brian

Yeah, thank you.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Flores Van Dyke with Compass Point. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Flores Van Dyke

Thanks, guys. Thank you for taking the question. Maybe if you could talk a little bit about, Brian, you're always talking about IR driven. What are the spread investing opportunities you have in your portfolio and how much potential ground rent Could you – do you have in the portfolio that you could harvest and redeploy into either redevelopment or new acquisitions?

speaker
Brian Harper

Thanks, Laura. So we did update our re-merchandising opportunities in the sub. That list is long, and there's a deeper list, you know, behind that. You know, we're – Where I like this is we were averaging, call it mid-double-digit yields, when we inherited 20 boxes when we first came over to the company. We see that same opportunity with these identified cases that we listed in the SUP. Those range from infill Miami real estate opportunities where maybe it's a wholesale or home improvement add-on, which will obviously have huge cap rate compression but also allow a lot of tailwind leasing to occur. to the asset that I was just referring to in one of our core markets, the grocery deal of putting that into a power center, replacing two tenants, and that's a 66% lease spread, to even the town and country center in St. Louis, Whole Foods, Target, HomeGoods, We have four active LOIs going with best-in-class retailers where there is massive demand. So we've been sharpshooting, and we've been working on this for a while. We've been proactive with the Steinmart boxes. For example, one's already in lease. The other one in St. Louis will probably be in lease soon as we come to conclusions on those LOIs. So we're seeing... We're seeing just great demand and great, especially from the junior boxes. And, Mike, do you want to touch upon the ground leases?

speaker
Barshop

Yeah. So the ground lease NOI that we have in the portfolio today, floors, is about $10 million or so. You describe a cap rate in the mid-single digits, you're $200 million of value. So reinvesting that in these releasing opportunities that Brian just touched on could be very, very creative for the company. And then in addition to that, if we wanted to redeploy that acquisition, there's a nice spread there as well. So good optionality.

speaker
Flores Van Dyke

Yeah, so around $10 million. So that's, you know, meaningful for a company your size. Maybe could you also comment on the leasing costs that you had this past quarter? Obviously, there were probably some one-offs in here, but, you know, the $75 million, sort of $75 per square foot TIs was about, you know, 50% higher than what you've averaged for the year. How is that going to trend going forward?

speaker
Brian Harper

It was high. It was heightened on one deal. It was a five below deal where we had a little bit of extra landlord work combining two spaces. You take that deal off and it was 44 bucks a square foot. So we see that as more of the moderate range of TIs going forward.

speaker
Flores Van Dyke

Great. Thanks. That's it for me, guys.

speaker
Brian

Thanks, Boris.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Mike Mueller with J.P. Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Mike Mueller

Yeah, hi. I guess looking at the 7.5-cent dividend for the first quarter, would that set by the board by looking at taxable net for the first quarter, or is that based more on a four-year view where you're expecting that dividend to be kind of constant throughout the year and then grow it in future years?

speaker
Brian Harper

I mean, it's based on full year. And I could say, you know, we set it really with obviously improved visibility and confidence in the cash flows, where we really want primarily focused on retaining our cheapest form of capital, especially in light of all of that huge upside with the re-merchandising opportunities that I've been talking about throughout this call and upside in our small shop occupancy. I think balance that with the approach of setting a competitive dividend, it allows us to grow it comfortably in even a no-growth environment. And we really set it to a level where we're retaining as much cash as we can for accretive leasing and re-merchandising opportunities to get those double-digit returns. So, you know, it will grow commensurate with earnings, and it really boils down to earnings growth and acquisitions.

speaker
Mike Mueller

Got it. Okay. And, Mike, you talked about the variability of where you could end up in the 2021 range based on theaters paying or not paying. How much of the $4.4 million reserves is tied to theaters, just ballpark?

speaker
Barshop

Yeah, I would say two-thirds of it, Mike. I think the best way to think about it is the clean number for the fourth quarter, X any prior period adjustments for, you know, bad debt and abatements was about 3.7 million. If there is no change in that number throughout 2021, that would bring you to the low end of the guy's range of 77 to 87. in the theater business, especially given the visibility we have and the conversations we have, especially with Regal, that they will reopen in the spring. We'll begin to get back to the days of contract rent. Those collections will improve over time, thereby reducing our bad debt expectations.

speaker
Mike Mueller

Got it. Okay.

speaker
Craig Schmidt

Thank you. You bet. Thanks, Mike.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Linda Tsai with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Linda Tsai

Hi. In terms of acquisitions, to the extent you're targeting high growth, high return markets, you've noted Miami, Charlotte, Richmond, Phoenix, Orlando. How has pricing changed since pre-COVID, and are you seeing more assets come to market?

speaker
Brian Harper

We have seen much more come to market, Linda, and a lot of that is talking with, like I said, whether it's private buyers or institutions directly. I think pricing from a cap rate hasn't changed much. NOI has in some of these centers, not all. But we really are really focused on you know, assets with the under market rent, assets that maybe have been mismanaged, assets where we could have a redevelopment, assets potentially, you know, where we might have a grocer or a home improvement or a wholesale club in our back pocket and could go buy a power center with doing that deal in due diligence, right? So we're very tenant focused, demand focused, um, IRR focused and really focused in on, you know, those types of markets, which you saw, you know, I could tell you, you know, we spent a ton of time in Austin and Lake Hills has been a home run acquisition for the company. We love Miami. We love Orlando. We love Tampa. We are seeing some tremendous opportunities and I've spent some time in Boston and love what's going on there with especially life science. And we see that as a macro trend that will just greatly – will never leave and just will be just a great investment opportunity in that city.

speaker
Linda Tsai

Thank you. That's it for me.

speaker
Brian Harper

Thanks, Linda.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. It appears we have no additional questions at this time, so I'd like to pass the floor back over to Mr. Harper for closing comments.

speaker
Brian Harper

Thank you, everybody, and I really appreciate all the questions. The pandemic has accelerated many trends in retail that were already underway. As an owner of retail real estate, it is imperative for us to adapt quickly to the rapidly evolving environment. I do believe our focus on strategically thinking about where the future of retail is heading and our private equity-like value creation mindset will set RPT apart from a crowded shopping center universe and put us at the forefront of the retail evolution. Thank you all for joining this call. We look forward to speaking with many of you on the virtual conference circuit in the next few weeks. Have a wonderful day.

speaker
Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Once again, we thank you for your participation, and you may disconnect your lines at this time.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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